Spanish literature enjoyed one tremendous burst of energy during its Golden Age, roughly from the mid-16th to the late-17th century, when virtually all forms of literature practiced by Spanish writers, but particularly the drama, reached the apex of their development. Although no straight line of development characterizes Spanish literature, the continuing strength of certain themes, qualities, and genres can be discerned. The heroic motifs, the soaring lyricism of its poetry, the tension between idealism and a cynical realism, the satirical, self-critical bent shared by writers of intense patriotism, the ingenious mixing of the traditional with the new--all make their appearance in every century. The novel as it was developed by Spanish writers during the 16th century endowed European literature with a major contribution to a then emerging form. The first Spanish literature consists of 40 or 50 love lyrics in the Mozarab dialect, known as jarchas, that were appended to Hebrew and Arabic poems produced in Moorish Spain during the 11th century. They are considered Europe's earliest Romance-language poetry. Shortly thereafter, the cantar de gesta, or epic poem, made its appearance in Spain. The first substantial work in this genre, The Poem of the Cid (c.1140; Eng. trans., 1959), portrays Spain's national hero, Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar. Realistic and well-grounded historically, the composition largely avoids the fantastic elements found in the epic poems of other countries. It relates the unjust exile of \TEl Cid\t from Castile, his pardon, the marriage and betrayal of his daughters by the arrogant Leonese, and the Cid's revenge. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD The two principal poetic forms used in medieval Spain were the mester de juglaria, or minstrel's mode, employed in epic poems, and the mester de clerecia, the cleric's mode. The clerics preferred rhymed quatrains to the minstrel's assonated lines. Most of the lyrics produced between the 12th and early 15th centuries were written in Galician-Portuguese and modeled on the poems of the troubadours (see \TProvencal literature\t). These satirical songs and amorous laments were replaced by the ballads, probably purple passages from epic poems transmitted orally from one generation to the next, which flourished especially in the 16th century and have remained popular to this day. Alfonso the Wise, king of Castile (r. 1252-84), the first to use Spanish as a cultural language, encouraged translations of the Old Testament and studies in all branches of learning. He wrote important historical and scientific treatises and, in Las siete partidas (The Seven Parts, 1256-65), produced the first modern code of laws. His most evocative personal work, Las cantigas de Santa Maria (The Canticles of Saint Mary), is probably the best Marian poetry of the Middle Ages. The greatest prose writer of the period was Alfonso's nephew, Prince Juan Manuel (1282-1349), who wrote 50 apologues, or allegorical narratives, under the title of Count Lucanor (1328-35; Eng. trans., 1868). Appearing 13 years before Boccaccio's Decameron (1349-53), the stories concern a young count who constantly seeks advice from his counselor, Patronio. From Patronio's tales, such as "The Emperor's New Clothes," the Count draws obvious moral lessons. The first full-length Spanish novel, El Caballero Cifar (c.1300-50)--an anonymous work filled with magical and religious elements--was also the first novel of chivalry. In the character of Squire Ribaldo can be seen a prototype of the picaro, or antihero, of later picaresque fiction. One of the monuments of Spanish literature, The Book of Good Love (1330; Eng. trans., 1972)--known as the "human comedy of the Middle Ages"--was written by the archpriest of Hita, Juan Ruiz (c.1283-1350). Ruiz used a variety of poetic meters in his ironic, sensual, sometimes delicate, sometimes coarse treatment of love. In addition to fables and scandalous parodies, Ruiz includes moving poems to the Virgin Mary. As an ambivalent actor in his panoramic 14th-century poem, he succumbs to human temptations and never quite resolves the conflict between carnal love and divine love. The influence of Italian poetry began to make itself felt in the 15th century. Even so, the aristocratic Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, the marquis of Santillana (1398-1458), won greater fame for his simple serranillas--popular songs concerning rustic encounters between refined knights and simple shepherdesses--than for his elegiac, allegorical Italianate verse. Juan de Mena (1411-56), Spain's first professional man of letters, wrote Latin-influenced poetry and an allegorical masterpiece, El laberinto de Fortuna (The Labyrinth of Fortune, 1444). Jorge Manrique (1440-79) created what became the single best-known poem in the Spanish language, Coplas, translated by Longfellow in 1833 as On the Death of His Father. In its 40 stanzas Manrique meditates on the transitory nature of worldly possessions and portrays this life as merely a preparation for the one after death. THE SPANISH RENAISSANCE In Spain the term Renaissance generally refers to the 16th century, and Baroque to the 17th. The humanistic Renaissance enjoyed by Italy and France never fully triumphed in Spain because of the grip of the Spanish church and the tenacity of medieval tradition. Yet scholastic and human truth achieved an uneasy coexistence as Spain entered the period of its greatest expansion and quickly emerged as the preeminent power on the Continent. One of the greatest expressions of Spanish literary genius at the turn of the new century, The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea (1499-1502; trans. 1959, and as The Spanish Bawd, 1631)--commonly called \TCelestina\t for its central character--melded medieval and Renaissance motifs. A novel written in dialogue form and divided into 21 acts, it features both humor and tragedy as it contrasts the erotic exaltation of the aristocratic Melibea and noble Calisto with the sordid transactions of the go-between Celestina and her greedy servants. The author, Fernando de Rojas (1465-1541), a Jewish convert to Catholicism, here preaches the theme of moral retribution. Known as the "faultless" poet of the 16th century, \TGarcilaso de la Vega\t fused Italian forms with Spanish tradition in his poetry to create a world of the imagination that exalted love and beauty. Even more important than his pastoral themes are the musicality and harmony of his sophisticated and elegant eclogues. More exuberant and sonorous in style, Fernando de Herrera (1534-97), the leader of the southern school of poetry, patriotically praised the triumph of Don Juan of Austria over the Turks at Lepanto in his Cancion . . . por la vitoria del Senor Don Juan (Song in Thanks for the Victory of Don Juan, 1572). Luis de Leon (1527-91), the leader of the northern school of poetry based in Salamanca, and perhaps Spain's finest poet, also wrote prose works of note. A kind of Christian Horace, he represented a perfect amalgam of the Christian and Platonic ideals. Spanish mystics of the 16th century relied on a highly original use of metaphor and a complicated yet popular language to create their powerful blend of realism and idealism. Saint \TTeresa of Avila\t, writing familiarly but passionately of her mystical experiences in her masterpiece, The Interior Castle (1588; Eng. trans., 1852, 1972)--also known as The Mansions of the Soul--had great literary impact. Saint \TJohn of the Cross\t, Spain's other preeminent mystic, wrote abstract, metaphysical poetry about his attempts at union with God and his struggles to illuminate the "dark night of the soul." The Novel In addition to novels of chivalry such as Amadis of Gaul (1508; Eng. trans., 1803)--based on an early 14th-century romance--whose hero overcomes incredible odds to win his lady, 16th-century Spanish prose forms included pastoral romances, sentimental allegorical novels about love, and Moorish novels filled with impossibly gallant protagonists. The most significant contribution of the period, however, was the anonymous, satirical Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of his Fortunes and Adversities (1554; Eng. trans., 1586), Spain's first important \Tpicaresque novel\t. Later notable examples of the genre--which was to exert an immense influence on the development of the novel in France and England in the 18th century--include the often moralistic The Rogue, or the Life of Guzman de Alfarache (2 vols., 1599 and 1604; Eng. trans., 1621) by Mateo \TAleman\t and The History of the Life of the Squire Marcos of Obregon (1618; Eng. trans., 1816) by Vicente Martinez \TEspinel\t. The culmination of the Spanish novel in the Golden Age was reached in Miguel de \TCervantes Saavedra\t's masterpiece, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (2 vols.; 1605, 1615)--considered one of the world's greatest novels. More than a parody of the novel of chivalry, \TDon Quixote\t (first translated into English, 1612-20) combines the real and the ideal with a quest for truth and the meaning of good and evil. The protagonist, "crazed" through his exposure to too many novels of chivalry, tries to apply his idealistic beliefs to real situations. Inevitably he fails, but the lesson of his goodness and kindness remains as a legacy for his down-to-earth companion, Sancho Panza. Possibly Spain's greatest literary figure, Cervantes also wrote a pastoral novel (1585), dramas, one-act farces, and 12 Exemplary Novels (1613; Eng. trans., 1640), which were prototypes of the Spanish short story. The Drama Spanish dramatists of the late 16th century were important for developing the themes and dramatic techniques that a theater going beyond the autos sacramentales--or religiously inspired one-act plays performed at Corpus Christi--would need. Among the leading figures who prepared the way for Spain's great dramatic achievements in the Golden Age are Juan del \TEncina\t, known as the father of Spanish drama; Bartolome de Torres Naharro (1485-1524), who elaborated the rules governing dramatic composition and who brought a new realism to the stage; Juan de la \TCueva\t, the first to use national themes and to mix tragedy and comedy; and Lope de \TRueda\t, the inventor of the paso, or brief comic interlude, based on real life and filled with popular, witty dialogue. LITERATURE OF THE GOLDEN AGE The four greatest figures of Spanish 17th-century theater are undoubtedly Lope de \TVega\t, \TTirso de Molina\t, Juan \TRuiz de Alarcon y Mendoza\t, and Pedro \TCalderon de la Barca\t. Lope, a lyrical genius who also wrote didactic poetry, novels, and short stories, virtually revolutionized theatrical practice with the 1,500 or so plays attributed to him. Rejecting classical precepts for the complicated intrigues that became the hallmark of the so-called comedies of cloak and sword, Lope extolled love, defended the monarchy and the Catholic faith, and evoked patriotism and honor in works that dealt with dramatic conflicts and ingeniously combined tragic and comic elements. Among his best works are Fuenteovejuna (c.1613), concerning the revolt of a village against a corrupt nobleman; Peribanez y el Comendador de Ocana (c.1610), a play on the theme of honor; and The Knight from Olmedo (c.1620-25; Eng. trans., 1961), an artistic tragedy involving love rivalries, witchcraft, and death. One of Lope's disciples, Guillen de \TCastro y Bellvis\t, is notable as the author of Las Mocedades del Cid (The Youth of the Cid, 1618), the first drama about Spain's national hero and the inspiration for Pierre Corneille's great tragedy on the same subject (1636). Another, Tirso, in the theologically loaded The Trickster of Seville (1630; Eng. trans., 1959), presented the first \TDon Juan\t, a figure that continued to haunt the European imagination. Ruiz de Alarcon keenly observed social vices in his stylized comedies of manners. Calderon's beautiful, allegorical, religious, and philosophical dramas, which rank among the greatest ever written, show the work of a careful craftsman, in contrast to that of the spontaneous Lope. In his rustic masterpiece, The Mayor of Zalamea (1643; Eng. trans., 1959), Calderon stresses the honor code, whereas in his ornamented Life Is a Dream (1635; Eng. trans., 1968) he meditates on free will and human destiny. In the 17th century, baroque literary forms involved the artificial exaggeration of language and abstract thought. The most famous exponent of the distortion of language for beauty's sake, Luis de \TGongora y Argote\t--who gave his name to the style known as \TGongorism\t--wrote a number of celebrated works but is primarily known for his highly ornate, pastoral poetic vision, Solitudes (1613; Eng. trans., 1921). Francisco Gomez de \TQuevedo y Villegas\t wrote ascetic, philosophical, moral, and satirical works in which he exposed the decadence of his country. In addition to more than 1,000 poems and his ferocious picaresque novel, The Life and Adventures of Buscon (1626; Eng. trans., 1657), Quevedo penned Visions (1627; Eng. trans., 1640), a collection of fantasies on hell and salvation in which he condemns the hypocrisy of Spanish life. Baltasar Gracian y Morales (1601-58), for his part, in his allegorical novel The Critick (1651-57; Eng. trans., 1681), contrasts natural and instinctive man with civilized and cultured man, showing the importance of experience as a source of prudence. In reaction against the previous century, 18th-century Spanish neoclassicists turned to French and Italian models. The period marked a decline from the originality and self-confidence that had once characterized Spanish literature. Among the few who stood out were Ramon de la Cruz (1731-94), the author of colorful and popular one-act farces; Leandro Fernandez de Moratin (1760-1828), who wrote modern thesis plays; and the essayist Benito Jeronimo Feijoo y Montenegro (1676-1764), who brought European culture to Spain. ROMANTICISM AND REALISM Spain shared in the tendencies and movements that shaped poetry, drama, and the novel throughout Europe in the 19th century. Representing romanticism, Angel de Saavedra (1791-1865), the duke of Rivas, published important narrative poetry and ballads and, with Don Alvaro (1835), produced the most exaggerated romantic drama of the century, on which Verdi based his opera La Forza del destino. Fusing all poetic tendencies in his experimental verse forms, Jose de Espronceda (1808-42) wrote of happiness as an illusion for which only death provides a solution. Jose \TZorrilla y Moral\t more affirmatively represented the spirit of Spanish romanticism in his poetry and plays, the most famous of which is Don Juan Tenorio (1844; Eng. trans., 1846). Ramon de \TCampoamor\t wrote short, ironic poems exemplifying eternal truths. Gustavo Adolfo \TBecquer\t, the greatest lyric poet of the 19th century, composed suggestive, musical verse to express the impalpable quality of frustrated love. Turning away from the picaresque and the allegorical, Spanish novelists embraced realism as a forum for the expression of their social views. Cecilia Bohl von Faber, who adopted the pen name Fernan \TCaballero\t, published the first well-known regional novel, The Sea-Gull (1849; Eng. trans., 1867), and in so doing transferred the essayistic mode known as costumbrismo to fiction. The best-known realistic novels, however, were concentrated in the last quarter of the 19th century: The Three-Cornered Hat (1874; Eng. trans., 1918, 1935), by Pedro Antonio de \TAlarcon\t; Pepita Jimenez (1874; Eng. trans., 1891), by the ironic and urbane Juan \TValera y Alcala Galiano\t; and Penas Arriba (Up the Mountain, 1894), which praised the virtues of tradition and country life, by Jose Maria de Pereda (1833-1906). Benito \TPerez Galdos\t, a Spaniard as prolific and protean as Balzac, wrote almost 80 novels dealing with every aspect of Spanish history and society, in which he stressed Christian love and spiritual and ethical values. Among the best were Dona Perfecta (1876; Eng. trans., 1894), an exposure of religious bigotry, and Fortunata and Jacinta (1886-87; Eng. trans., 1973), a panoramic portrayal of 19th-century Madrid. Toward the end of the century realism ceded to naturalism in the novels of Emilia \Tpardo\t BAZAN, Leopoldo \TAlas\t (better known as Clarin), and Vicente \TBlasco Ibanez\t. Clarin, in La Regenta (The Judge's Wife, 1884-85), examined the sexual, political, and religious mores of a provincial town and, with his protagonist, Ana Ozores, created one of the great feminine figures of Spanish literature. Of the numerous novels by Blasco Ibanez, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916; Eng. trans., 1918), dealing with the pain and violence of World War I, became best known internationally. THE 20TH CENTURY The "Generation of '98" demonstrated a love of countryside, nostalgia for past virtues, and passionate interest in the historical debate over the modernization of Spain: they were dedicated to the regeneration of their country through will and action. Miguel de \TUnamuno\t, the most cultured member of the group, tried his hand at all genres. His long poem, The Christ of Velazquez (1920; Eng. trans., 1951), and his best-known essay, The Tragic Sense of Life (1912; Eng. trans., 1921), as well as his dramas and novels, all reflect the spiritual anguish of modern individuals confronted by their mortality and the failure to reconcile reason with natural human needs. Jose Martinez \TRuiz\t (also known as Azorin), sensitive to history and classical literature, evoked the timelessness of the Castilian countryside in his descriptive essays. Even more influential abroad than in his homeland, Jose \TOrtega y Gasset\t brought erudition to his discussions of the human condition, art, and the shape of the future in long philosophical essays such as The Revolt of the Masses (1930; Eng. trans., 1932) and The Dehumanization of Art (1925; Eng. trans., 1948). Modernism, a literary renovation of form, promoted an evasive aestheticism, but 20th-century poets soon found their own styles. Antonio \TMachado\t represents the eternal verities of the Castilian landscape in his Campos de Castila (1912), which became the spiritual and poetic breviary of the Generation of '98. Juan Ramon \TJimenez\t stressed beauty and pantheism, as opposed to Machado's metaphysical anguish, in his delicate, abstract poems, which in 1956 won him the Nobel Prize. His Platero and I (1917; Eng. trans., 1957) remains a classic of poetic prose. Leon Felipe Camino y Galicia (1884-1968) employed epic and biblical tones to convey the tragedy of modern humanity and of the Spanish Civil War. A leader of the Generation of 1927, which opened poetry to new influences, Federico \TGarcia Lorca\t combined popular poetry with odd sensory combinations and magic metaphors in his celebrated Gypsy Ballads (1928; Eng. trans., 1953). As one of the purest lyric voices of the 20th century, Garcia Lorca continues to exert an influence far beyond the confines of the Spanish-speaking world. A surrealist poet, Vicente \TAleixandre\t concentrated in his early poetry on death and erotic fusion with the cosmos; later he discovers man as a social being. In 1977 he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Rafael \TAlberti\t, in exile in Argentina from the Civil War to 1977, seeks values in an absurd, disintegrating world. Many of the poets of the Generation of 1927 experimented with poetry in the tradition of Gongora. The next generation returned to Garcilaso's graceful rhythms. In the 20th century Jacinto \TBenavente y Martinez\t freed Spanish drama from the melodramatic dictates of Jose \TEchegaray y Eizaguirre\t, subtly satirizing Spanish society with irony and elegance in such dramas as The Bonds of Interest (1907; Eng. trans., 1936). The author of 172 plays, he was honored by the Nobel Prize (1922) midway in his career. Ramon del \TValle Inclan\t, author of lyrical erotic novels, in the 1920s developed the esperpento, an expressionistic type of theater that grotesquely distorted reality through the deformation of language and the use of puppetlike characters in order to express his mordant view of Spanish civilization. Garcia Lorca concentrated on elementary passions and concepts such as virginity and motherhood in his powerful dramatic trilogy made up of Blood Wedding (1933; Eng. trans., 1939), Yerma (1934; Eng. trans., 1941), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936; Eng. trans., 1947). Alejandro Casona (1903-65) wrote about the need to face life bravely in his special fusion of fantasy and realism. Antonio Buero \TVallejo\t, in fantastic, philosophical, psychological, and historical tragedies of hope, dramatizes human dignity and responsibility. In a more pessimistic vein, Alfonso \TSastre\t, Spain's best-known contemporary playwright, deals with the social and existential dilemmas of people tortured and trapped by their own weaknesses. The Spanish Civil War has long been an obsession of Spanish writers, and many hundreds of novels use the war and its causes and effects as central themes. Among them, Jose Maria Gironella's The Cypresses Believe in God (1953; Eng. trans., 1955) is an attempt to explain the ideologies involved. Ana Maria Matute's In This Land (1955) is an expurgated version of an earlier, censored work and a precursor of her fine war novel, The Lost Children (1958; Eng. trans., 1965). The death (1975) of dictator Francisco Franco ended a censorship characterized as much by puritanism as by political restrictions. During the dictatorship many prominent writers went into exile, among them the playwright Fernando \TArrabal\t and the novelists Ramon Sender (1901-82) and Ramon Perez de Ayala (1880-1962). Both novelists express an ultimate faith in humanity, a faith not shared by a majority of contemporary Spanish authors. Camilo Jose \TCela\t's brutal and violent The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942; Eng. trans., 1953) typifies a popular literary style called tremendismo. Less obvious but equally pessimistic is the work of another exile, Juan \TGoytisolo\t, and of the novelist Miguel Delibes. Kessel Schwartz Bibliography: Brenan, Gerald, The Literature of the Spanish People, 2d ed. (1953); Chandler, Richard E., and Schwartz, Kessel, A New History of Spanish Literature (1961); Cobb, Carl W., Contemporary Spanish Poetry, 1898-1963 (1976); Ilie, Paul, The Surrealist Mode in Spanish Literature (1968) and Literature and the Inner Exile: Authoritarian Spain, 1939-75 (1981); McClellan, I. L., Origins of the Romantic Movement in Spain, 2d ed. (1975); Monteser, Frederick, The Picaresque Element in Western Literature (1975); Shergold, N. D., A History of the Spanish Stage (1967); Wellwarth, George E., Spanish Underground Drama (1972); Stamm, James R., A Short History of Spanish Literature, rev. ed. (1979); Ward, Philip, ed., The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature (1978). See also: \TCatalan literature\t; \TLatin American literature\t.